Going Flat Out
by White Aster
Summary: Sideswipe wants to see Blurr race. Really RACE. He finds a way to make this happen.


_Written for Ladydragon76, who was kind enough to donate toward my fundraiser for lupus research! Ostensibly, this is in IDWverse, but I don't know if these three were ever on Earth together and in a position to do this, so consider it AU if necessary._

* * *

It took a lot of convincing. Partly because, really, _salt_. Blurr bitched about how bad the traction would probably be. Sunny bitched about what it would do to his paint.

But Sideswipe had a vision. A vision that involved both of his mates very hot and bothered and a LOT of fragging. So he just sat back, one night, stretched out on the berth with one on either side, and painted them a picture. A picture of hard-running engines, competition, and a Cybertronian racer opening up his engine to really fly in ways he wasn't able to anywhere else on Earth due to little things like speed limits and geography.

By the time he was done describing it, Blurr was wiggling a little. "That's out in the desert, though, isn't it? It'll be too hot. I hit max speed at that temp, and I'll overheat."

Oh ye of little faith, who thought that Sideswipe hadn't thought of these little details. "Deserts here still have seasons. Now it's, 70 Fahrenheit, max, and down into the 30s at night. That's why I'm suggesting this now and not in August."

Blurr thought about it some more, core temp slowly ticking up.

Sideswipe looked over at Sunstreaker, giving him a "well, you game?" look.

Sunstreaker watched Blurr's fingers walk their way up the inside of Sideswipe's thigh, huffed, and said, "You are _washing_ me afterwards. Thoroughly. To my specifications-"

"Is that supposed to be a punishment?"

"-and you'd better have enough paint and time off-duty waiting for me to redo my finish."

Primus knew that Sunny could take an entire rotational cycle to repaint himself, but enough people owed Sideswipe favors that he thought he could swing some creative rearrangement of duty shifts. "Done," he said, not a little smugly. He felt he was entitled to it. He did, after all, have a revved-up racer draped all over him.

The set-up was more work than even Sideswipe had anticipated. The human organizers of the speed trials hadn't taken much convincing. An offer of a chunk of cash and the assurance that they'd be able to meet them and watch the fastest Cybertronian in the universe start had ensured that the Autobots would have some nice, semi-private use of the graded tracks. Negotiating shift swaps with a veritable army of minibots came next. Then, Sideswipe mostly started glaring at the weather. The speedway itself was nicely packed, but he was told that there was a sweet spot, dependent on the amount of rain they'd gotten recently. Too much, and they would be up to their tailpipes in mud. He'd been tempted to say to the Pit with coordinating with the speedway and just take Sunny and Blurr offroading on the salt flats whenever was convenient. His contacts (a human male named Bill Dawson and his wife, Evie), though, had made a point of telling Sideswipe that most of the flats that were not part of the speedway were pretty much constant mud under the crust. Evidently it was a reflexive warning, as the humans had to tow idiots out of the mud pretty regularly.

In the end, between speed trial schedules, weather, and shift changes, Sideswipe felt like he was juggling four units in a pitched battle. He thought that it would probably have been easier to just time this so they'd have a nice, long, straight stretch of I-80 all to themselves, but doing this somewhere they were allowed to race was part of the attraction. Just the mention of the word "speedway" made Blurr's optics light up. Being told that he'd have an audience (no matter how small), had him all but crawling in Sideswipe's lap.

So Sideswipe dug in, did his homework, and actually organized slag. He swore to himself that the fragging had better be worth it. But he did it, and he did a slagging fine job of it, too.

And thus it was that Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, and Blurr took a little field trip to Utah. The weather was good, the salt flats were...flat...and salty. But it was also the longest stretch of flat-out straight "road" that Sideswipe had seen on this planet.

Blurr eyed that distance speculatively even as they all politely chatted and had their pictures taken with Bill and Evie.

"So're you three gonna race?" Bill asked, eventually, as Blurr drifted over to the track.

Blurr smirked, and Sideswipe smiled and shook his head. "Sunny and I can race. Blurr's so far out of our league, you'd have to strap jet engines to us to even keep up."

"And even then I'd still beat you," Blurr said, moving to the start line. His frame clinked gently with the sound of microtransformations as vents were cleared, joints loosened here and tightened there, panels flattened for aerodynamics, and (probably sub-harmonic for the humans) his engine subtly shifted into a gear he hardly ever had reason to use on Earth. He smiled off into the distance, apparently lost in whatever internal pre-race routine he did.

Even the humans sensed it, and Bill gestured with a grin to his wife running the electronics board. The countdown lights on the "Christmas tree" blinked on, settling eventually on red. Evie looked at Blurr a bit uncertainly before calling, "Ready?"

Blurr curled down for a runner's start, tips of his fingers settling precisely in the dirt, optics on the horizon, and nodded.

Bill tilted his head. "Wait, so he's gonna _run_?"

He sounded a little disappointed. "Heh," Sideswipe said to Bill. "Just watch."

Sunny had optics only for Blurr as the racer went still and distant, both of their engines growling hot and hungry.

The lights fell down the tree ( _yellow-yellow-green_ ), there was a quick roar of noise as Blurr's systems engaged, and then he was gone, a plume of dust, a slight tremble to the ground, and a line of slight indentations in the track the only thing left of him.

"Holy mother of God," Bill breathed, reaching for his binoculars. "How fast he going? Ev?"

"Well," Evie said, eyeing a display. "800 an hour. At least. Think he's going too fast for this setup to track."

Sideswipe did a quick calculation in his head. "His top speed's about twice that. Needs a much bigger space to hit it, though."

"Holy shit," Bill said, grinning ear to ear and squinting toward the plume of suspended salt that was Blurr. "That is a damn sight."

Sunstreaker paced out onto the track and transformed, revving his engine impatiently.

"Heh. Our turn." Sideswipe stepped back far enough to transform himself and align himself at the starting line with Sunny. "Thanks a lot!" He called to the humans. "And don't wait up!"

"Have fun!" Bill called.

 _Oh, you have no idea._ Sideswipe thought, his processor lingering over the thrill of the chase, the taste of hot light-weight alloys, and a racer-class engine purring under him. Not to mention the hot weight of Sunny's lust pressing in the back of his spark, promising all sorts of pleasurable things. Most of them seemed to involve pinning Blurr and Sideswipe down into hot, salty earth and making them scream.

This was, Sideswipe decided, his best idea, ever.

 _Yellow-yellow-GREEN!_


End file.
